The hard won triumph of a
well-built house means many compromises, but the ultimate satisfaction
is worth everything.
I do not purpose, in this book, to go into the historic traditions of
architecture and decoration--there are so many excellent books it were
absurd to review them--but I do wish to trace briefly the development of
the modern house, the woman's house, to show you that all that is
intimate and charming in the home as we know it has come through the
unmeasured influence of women. Man conceived the great house with its
parade rooms, its _grands appartements_ but woman found eternal parade
tiresome, and planned for herself little retreats, rooms small enough
for comfort and intimacy. In short, man made the house: woman went him
one better and made of it a home.
The virtues of simplicity and reticence in form first came into being,
as nearly as we can tell, in the _Grotta_, the little studio-like
apartment of Isabella d'Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, away back in
1496. The Marchioness made of this little studio her personal retreat.
Here she brought many of the treasures of the Italian Renaissance.
Really, simplicity and reticence were the last things she considered,
but the point is that they were considered at all in such a restless,
passionate age. Later, in 1522, she established the _Paradiso_, a suite
of apartments which she occupied after her husband's death.
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